Managing your online reviews can be a time-consuming and arduous process. There are so many places on the web where there can be reviews posted about your business or brand – keeping up with all of them can take a lot of time and effort.

Luckily, there are a few ways you can simplify your online review management using different tools and strategies. Here are a couple to start using now!

Simplifying Your Online Review Management: Strategies to Implement

Want to spend as little time as possible managing your online reviews? Here are a few strategies to implement now.

Spend time on review management daily

Reputation management is the kind of thing that can really pile up, making it a daunting bunch of work to do all at once. Instead, set aside just a small portion of time daily to check on everything.

Also, missing a negative review for any amount of time can be really detrimental! Letting something negative sit there without a response for days or weeks not only reflects poorly on your business or brand by making you look absent, but can actually turn potential customers or clients away.

Get organized

Having your reputation management essentials all in one place can really speed up how long it takes you to do your monitoring/updating each week. A couple ways to get organized are:

1. Use filters and folders in your inbox. Make one called something like “Reputation” and filter out emails from sources that are associated with your reputation. This might include emails from Google My Business, Yelp, your owned social media channels, and any other review sites related to your industry..
2. Create a bookmark folder. Set up a folder (preferably in your bookmarks bar) with sites you need to visit often to check on your reputation. This way, you can quickly click down through them to streamline your reputation management process.

Create content

Do you have a blog on your website? If so, keep it updated. If not, set one up!

Hang on – doesn’t creating content take time? Isn’t this post supposed to be about saving time on reputation management?

Well, yes – and yes! Creating content can actually save you time in the long run. Here are a couple ways content can both have a positive impact on your reputation and save you some time:

• You can answer common questions. People are most likely to leave a bad review when they’re frustrated, and being unable to find the answer to a question can be a source of frustration. This will not only help your reputation stay positive, but will also save you the time of responding to the same questions multiple times and dealing with the fallout of those frustrated consumers.
• You can create positive touch points for consumers with your business or brand. By creating something helpful that your consumers will find useful, you’re building trust with them, leaving them more likely to leave positive reviews or send referrals your way. A more positive reputation = a simpler one to manage!

Have a social media strategy

Being active on social media is a huge piece of any reputation management strategy. That said, being active on social media does take time. However, putting time into social media management will save time on the reputation management end, and has too many other benefits to ignore.

We won’t go into all of those benefits here, but as far as your reputation management time goes, staying active on social media will help you spot negative reviews right when they happen, rather than missing them for critical days or weeks.

Simplifying your online review management: Tools to use

There are some tools out there that can really be helpful with online review management. Here are just a couple to check out.

Google Alerts

This free tool by Google is very handy! It’ll send you an email any time it spots a word or phrase you tell it to look for. So, set it up to search for your business name or brand and it’ll let you know if and when you’re mentioned online.

While this tool is awesome and you should definitely use it, it won’t often see your new reviews. So use it for mentions, but don’t rely on it to spot new reviews.

IFTTT

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a free, versatile tool that connects apps that might not traditionally work together. You can use it for things like sending you an automatic email when a new post shows up on a blog you love, sending your social posts from one network to also post on the others, and posting an automatic tweet when someone mentions you, for instance.

There are so many different things IFTTT can do – we can’t possibly cover it here! Check out the tool for yourself.

Mention

Mention is a more robust social listening tool. It starts at $30/month for the most basic plan, but can definitely be worth it if you’ve got a really active social media presence. The tool features a great dashboard that makes managing your reputation on social media a breeze.

A reputation management tool

If you really want to streamline your reputation management, using a specific reputation management platform, such as Rize Reviews, is a great way to go. These platforms feature all the tools that’ll make your reputation management job easier and faster.

For Instance, Rize Reviews features a dashboard, review monitoring, automatic emailing, a website widget, SMS capability, social media sharing, and more.

Wrapping it up

Online review management doesn’t have to take up all your marketing time. By implementing a few strategies and taking a look at some tools to use, you can really streamline the whole process!

Want to have your online review management done for you? Check out Rize Reviews now and let us handle it!